Rex Smith: Balance can get in the way of the truth

Let’s agree, first of all, that the world is round. It’s not necessary, I’m quite sure, for a journalist concerned about being fair to include here a statement from somebody insisting those photos from space are a hoax and that folks risk falling off the surface of our pancake-shaped planet.

We probably can agree, too, that cigarettes cause cancer. There are a few people, even some with Ph.D.s, who still dispute that, I’m told. But scientists long ago settled this issue, and the American courts followed their lead. I probably don’t need to include a quotation here from somebody who believes cancer can be stopped by ingesting apricot pits.

Let’s be a bit more bold: The human immunodeficiency virus, HIV, causes AIDS. That’s disputed by some immunologists, but the scientific consensus is so strong that you can write an article about the worst pandemic in history — 25 million dead, the biggest impact yet to come — without including those doubters. Hitler’s “Final Solution” led to a holocaust that took millions of lives: True, the crackpot holocaust deniers be damned. The galaxies were spewed across the universe with a Big Bang: True, even if you believe a Supreme Being put those forces into play. The Earth is warming at a dangerous and unprecedented rate due to the intrusion of human factors: True.

Uh-oh. How did global warming get into this list? In the interest of fairness, must I now quote someone who believes talk of climate change is a scheme to create a world government under the United Nations? Or, perhaps, one of the scientists who claim we are not, in fact, living amid the greatest shift of temperature since 8,200 years ago, before civilization began?

Standard journalistic practice, we learn as cub reporters, is to give voice in our stories to contrasting views. A candidate can brag about his record on the stump, but a reporter covering those remarks is obligated to check with that candidate’s opponent, who may have another view. That’s fairness.

That applies to broader reporting practice, too. This week our reporters covering the manhunt for Ralph “Bucky” Phillips, suspected of killing one state trooper and injuring two others, found some residents of western New York who considered the guy a folk hero. We reported that, but we might have been viewed as maligning a whole region if we hadn’t also quoted people who consider him a creep.

But when it comes to science, standard reportorial practice can become an impediment to journalism’s fundamental goal of imparting truth. What we sometimes call “he said-she said” reporting, in which one side’s statements are balanced by the other side’s contrasting views, may do more to confuse readers than enlighten them.

“In some quarters of the media, there’s an effort to find balance — the other side,” noted atmospheric scientist Richard Somerville told our editorial board this week. “In this case, there is no other side.”

There will be letters to the editor disputing this, I’m sure, taking me to task for buying into one side of a political argument. But this isn’t about politics; it’s science, and journalists ought to understand that the issue of climate change has become as much a matter of settled science as tobacco’s effect on your lungs. Scientists and statisticians are familiar with the term “outliers.” An outlier is a piece of data that is an abnormal distance from a random sample of the whole data — something that doesn’t fit with what is otherwise observably true. Those few scientists who still dispute the existence and impact of climate change aren’t brave contrarians, but outliers from the accepted knowledge base of their professional colleagues.

Just as we can find people who say AIDS isn’t a disease and woman wasn’t created until the sixth day of the world’s existence, it’s not hard to get comments from people with graduate degrees who dispute the whole notion of climate change. But there’s a point where such purported balance contributes to a willful ignorance of what’s true.

Yes, it’s hard not to write, “On the other hand …” when somebody pops up with something to say. But sometimes truth arrives before we recognize it, and we journalists do you no favor if we let our habits replace a rigorous determination to let readers know what’s really going on.

One Response

I’d hate to disappoint you with no comments, so I’ll be first.
Except I almost agree.
I do think you did a poor job making your point.

The scientific consensus is global temperatures are rising at a dangerous rate. But here’s where I think you overreached. While the data also agrees that this is the fastest rise in human history, that is not the same as “unprecedented rate.”
Recorded history represents 0.00018% of the history of the earth. Saying the rise is unprecedented supports the second clause “due to the intrusion of human factors.” The fact that you’re underlying statement is not true undermines your assertion that the cause of global warming is an unassailable truth.
My reading of the debate would indicates the consensus, such as it is, is that there are both natural and human causes and where the balance lies is up for debate.
That said, I agree with your basic point that it’s time to stop debating whether global warming exists.